Health Services Research & Development Service (HSR&D) investigators Brian E. Dixon, PhD, MPA, and Michael E. Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, were among the 18 new Fellows inducted into the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) on November 4, 2018 during the American Medical Informatics Association’s (AMIA) annual symposium.
Brian E. Dixon, PhD, MPA, is an affiliate investigator with HSR&D’s Center for Health Information and Communication, in Indianapolis, IN, and an Associate Professor at Indiana University’s Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health. Dr. Dixon’s research focuses on applying informatics methods and tools to improve population health in clinical as well as public health organizations, including the VA. His work leverages clinical and administrative data in electronic health records to measure population health, better understand the determinants of health, examine information flow in the health system, and improve outcomes in individuals and populations. Within HSR&D, Dr. Dixon supports the introduction and evaluation of information technologies that capture, manage, apply, and share data in support of Veterans’ health. This includes the Veteran Health Information Exchange (VHIE) that connects VA providers with non-VA providers involved in the care of Veterans. Currently Dr. Dixon is co-leading a HSR&D study, “Regional data exchange to improve care for veterans after non-VA hospitalization,” that seeks to examine how information exchange can facilitate care coordination.
Michael E. Matheny, MD, MS, MPH, is Associate Director of VA’s Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) and an HSR&D affiliate investigator and practicing primary care general internist with the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System (TVHS) in Nashville, TN. Dr. Matheny is also Associate Director of the TVHS VA Advanced Fellowship Program in Medical Informatics, and is the Director of the Center for Population Health Informatics and Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics, and Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His research interests focus on natural language processing, data mining, and population health analytics, as well as health services research in acute kidney injury, diabetes, and device safety in interventional cardiology. Dr. Matheny has been involved in the development, evaluation, and validation of automated outcome surveillance methods and computer applications. In addition, Dr. Matheny is the principal investigator of the HSR&D study, “Automated Surveillance and Intervention among Patients with Liver Cirrhosis.” He also is leading the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership extraction, transformation, and loading team for national VA data within VINCI, and is a co-principal investigator for the HS&RD Million Veteran Program study, “Advancing the Phenotyping of Acute Kidney Injury for the Million Veteran Program,” and Phase 2 of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Patient-Oriented Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research (pSCANNER) trial.
The ACMI is an honorary College of elected Informatics Fellows from the United States and abroad who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of medical informatics, and who have met rigorous scholarly scrutiny by their peers. The ACMI exists as a subsidiary entity of the AMIA, whose members play a leading role in assessing the effect of health innovations on health policy and advancing the field of informatics.
